


A Good Listener

by Raptor_Redemption



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Character Study, Hallucinogens, M/M, Mild Blood, Open to Interpretation, Possibly Unrequited Love, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 12:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20866547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raptor_Redemption/pseuds/Raptor_Redemption
Summary: Your name is Gamzee Makara, and you talk to yourself a whole motherfucking lot.





	A Good Listener

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was created for and featured in the [Pro8lematic Faves ](https://twitter.com/pro8lematiczine)Homestuck zine and is my first Homestuck fic beyond drabble length. This piece went through about four iterations before I settled on its final form.
> 
> What a journey.

You talk to yourself a whole motherfucking lot. Or maybe it’s more that you’re THINKING to yourself and it’s not really words happening at all. Thoughts are words, though, and words are actions, so ain’t that be meaning that whatever you’re thinking you might as well be up and doing?

In a perfect world where the miracles were all blessing you in your space and shit, swirling in your hive and buzzing through knotted curls of your hair, a warm slurp of flat orange Faygo would have bestowed on you the great wisdom of a motherfuckin answer.

You discover that existence just ain’t blessing you with that kind of sweet, delicious knowledge today, but there is a horn kinda up your ass from chillin’ in that sweet pile for too long.

What the fuck ever, you guess. You can’t be such a greedy motherfucker that you start expecting miracles every day. They come to YOU, not the other way around, and that’s just the way it BE, you feel?

You can only keep so many delicious, fluorescent green slime pies in your respiteblock before you run out, and the hoard of mostly-empty two-liter bottles of Faygo DO grow smaller (even when you’re, like, ENTIRELY motherfuckin SURE that your stash is just as eternal as the miracles you live by).

Without your pies and two whole damned liters of that sweet, bubbly elixir, you sleep. Then, you dream (which is way different than your hella spaceouts), which totally MOTHERFUCKIN sucks. Your dreams are kinda wonky, if you’re going to speak all fancy about them.

Hell, you don’t know for sure which of those wicked dope visions are yours and which ones stay in your subsconscience or whatever the fuck. You kind of aren’t sure, which is likely a bigger motherfucking deal than you’re making it since your dreams often involve literal, nasty-as-all-hell instances of MANSLAUGHTER.

Sometimes, you just want a mirthful distraction from all this shit--pure bliss with a bro. Murder is a topic all up for another time and what the fuck not.

You blearily log onto Trollian, where you spend quite a lot of fucking valuable-ass time talking to your totally wicked bestest of brothers. Maybe the time you spend with them is minutes, or maybe it’s hours. Hard to tell when there’s sopor slime stuck between your teeth and your eyes are seeing all kinds of bitchin’ starry constellations spelling out the miracles of life across the walls.

terminallyCapricious [TC] began trolling adiosToreador [AT]

AT: hI, uH DID YOU KNOW THAT IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY,

AT: nOT THAT, lIKE, i’M NOT HAPPY TO HEAR FROM YOU OR WHATEVER,

AT: jUST THOUGHT THAT MAYBE YOU’D LIKE TO KNOW,

AT: bUT, uM, nO BIG DEAL IF NOT,

TC: WhAt? ReAlLy, BrOtHeR? 

TC: WeLl MoThErFuCkInG sHiT, i'M sOrRy If I wOkE yOu My GoOd BiTcH. 

TC: I wAs JuSt HoPiNg To ShOoT tHe ShIt WiTh YoU, yOu KnOw? 

TC: GeT aLl FuCkInG dElIgHtEd By EaCh OtHeR's CoMpAnY aNd StAy AlL uP aNd FaR aWaY fRoM tHe KiNd Of NoNsEnSe ThE mIrAcLeS tElL mE.

AT: hUH, wELL OKAY, iF YOU SAY SO I GUESS,

AT: wHAT DO THE MIRACLES TELL YOU,

AT: oR IS THAT SOME KIND OF DIVINE KNOWLEDGE, a KIND OF THING I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO ASK ABOUT,

TC: YeAh ThAt'S kInD oF aN iNdIvIdUaL eXpErIeNcE, mY bRoThEr. 

TC: CaN't ReAlLy Be ExPlAiNeD.

TC: GoTtA lEaRn ThAt ShIt FoR yOuRsElF aNd GeT yOuR oWn DiViNe KnOwLeDgE iMpArTeD fRoM tHe MiRaCuLoUs UnIvErSe.

AT: wEll, mAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY AND GET SOME REST OR SOMETHING,

AT: iT SEEMS LIKE MAYBE THE MIRACLES ARE STRESSING YOU OUT A LOT LATELY,

AT: wHICH, iF I CAN BE REALLY HONEST WITH YOU, mAKES ME WANT TO TRY AND AVOID THEM AT ALL COSTS,

AT: bUT, lIKE, dON’T TAKE THAT WRONG WAY OR ANYTHING, bECAUSE I KNOW THEY’RE IMPORTANT TO YOU,

TC: NaH, i GoTcHu. MaYbE yOu'Re RiGhT aNd StUfF.

TC: I tRuSt YoU, bRoThEr. BeT yOu'Re ThE rEaL mIrAcLe In DiSgUiSe Or SoMeThInG, gIvIn' Me AlL tHiS vEiLeD wIsDoM lIkE a MoThErFuCkInG pRoPhEt.

TC: DaMn.

TC: It'S pRoBaBlY a SiGn.

You up and guess to yourself that you’ll try to succumb to the maliciously joyful calls of sleep again, but only because Tavros wouldn’t steer you wrong. He’s your chillest, most wicked brother of all, chock full to the brim with rhymes as miraculous as the prophetical shit you took last week.

You convince yourself that your dreamscapades aren’t getting anymore violent and religiously monumental at all. You tell yourself that the increasing amounts of wickedly savage betrayal and completely heinous amounts of bloodshed don’t mean nothing at all except that you need a few more pies per day to keep your thoughts at motherfucking peace.

This is what you tell yourself, when you’re all rambling and shit and bathing in the sound of your own tumultuous, reverberating voice that sounds like some motherfuckin clown’s (a high motherfucking compliment, mind you) and not your own. Whatever it is, it’s comforting, like the nests of magic that keep your urges at bay.

Then, you lose some time, but that’s all normal and shit, not like you’ve never found yourself lost in the plane of transcendent time and space before.

In another dream, you don’t talk to yourself no more, and your motherfucking thoughts ain’t even CLOSE to any version of you that’s ever inhabited any part of the whole damned paradox space.

You try, of course, because talking to yourself is just what you motherfuckin do--

What you’ve always done.

TC: HONK :o)

This one’s a weird one, a total doozy, nothing like the nap hallucinations that have cohabitated your mind for the better fucking part of forever. Hell, you’re kind of all intimidated, and it’s not a cool feeling for you. A brother shouldn’t have to process things so quietly.

A brother should be able to say something more than motherfucking

TC: HONK :o)

TC: HONK :o)

TC: HONK :o)

whenever he needs to up and process his shit.

It doesn’t motherfucking help that all your blissful distractions are gone. Good luck keeping your motherfucking instincts to yourself. Can’t talk to your fucking self, can’t talk to your wicked brothers, can’t talk to no one but your own damned brain which is WAY TOO MOTHERFUCKING SOBER FOR THIS SHIT. 

TC: HONK :o)

You’re well accustomed to sleep paralysis in your recuperacoon, ‘cuz Equius always said the pies did weird shit to your head that made it a whole, blessed SITUATION to wake up in the morning.

You never really listened to that motherfucking peasant and his words as salty as the damned sweat all up and making his skin look like the plastic wrap you sometimes remember to wrap your slime pies in.

Still, this dream state or hallucination or miracle or whatever the fuck seems worse, somehow, almost like there’s a huge ol’ puppet master pulling at your fragile strings and making you DANCE and what not.

The thing is--you can’t dance, unless you consider “dancing” just to be a weird tango between you and the tangle of cool, hard-as-a-rock limbs (you THINK they’re limbs?) you’ve taken to bunking with during this particularly bad trip of a dream sequence. 

Maybe it’s a damned magical blessing that you can’t speak in here, in a dark place that seems like it should be fucking cold but is kind of just disappointingly lukewarm instead.

For some reason, you remember a choice phrase you laid on Tavros before:

TC: We CoUlD sPlIt A tIn Of ThE pImPeSt SnEeZe I gOt On HaNd, BaKeD uP aLl SpEcIaL fOr YoU.

TC: aNd ThEn MaYbE mAkE oUt A lItTlE.

It’s around the same time you recognize a sticky moisture smeared across the corner of your lips and one of your cheeks, not wet like the innards of a pie you wish you had but definitely fucking don’t, but thicker and more metallic.

If you close your eyes (and it’s so dank and dark in this nasty-ass excuse for a dream sequence that your eyes could be wide open and swallowing up the wicked sick secrets of the universe without you knowing), you can imagine him there with you.

Maybe you’re trading the most mirthful of rhymes, the kind of noise that’s even more deeply comforting than a fresh bottle of carbonated syrup that stains your tongue ‘til it’s the color of some other troll’s blood--

Could be that you’re sharing some pies and he don’t want any, but that’s cool and all. Just means more for you.

Tavros was always telling you all sweet and concerned like that you should be gettin’ your chillest of slumbers on. It feels nice to return the favor.

TC: HONK :o)

It don’t even matter that you can’t get your increasingly important point across. Tavros ain’t movin’, like he KNOWS what you meant. Like, DAMN, he’s real still, almost like he’s so entranced with your wickedly solid advice that it’s made his blood go cold.

You’ve always appreciated what a good fuckin listener he is, so you figure you might as well talk some more while he’s sleeping, just in case he’s as whacked out as you are. Maybe you’ll impart him with the divinest of miraculous knowledge, and maybe he’ll wake up so enlightened that he won’t question your suddenly limited-as-all-get-out vocabulary.

You whisper against a chilly protuberance that you think might be his chin or something, but it don’t matter. Whatever it is, it’s getting blessed with the tightest knowledge you can up and muster.

Sweet dreams or something, you want to say. It’s sick as fuck that you’re sharing this miraculous dreamworld shit with your best bro, and he ain’t even had that much slime pie. You pour out your feelings against whatever it is that’s oozing from his neck and smeared across your face.

TC: HONK :o)

TC: HONK :o)

It ain’t what you planned, but it’ll have to fucking do.

**Author's Note:**

> Be sure to check out the [Pro8lematic Faves Twitter account](https://twitter.com/pro8lematiczine) for more info about how you can download the entire zine for free and support the rest of the writers and artists who contributed. It's a beautiful collaboration, and it deserves lots of love!
> 
> Thanks for reading, and don't forget to leave a comment with your thoughts.
> 
> Honk. :o)


End file.
